Our Christmas Door

At Christmas time our pantry door fills with pictures of family and friends. It makes us so happy. We love to see and hear about what everyone is doing.

Christmas

Christmas Eve:

Christmas Morning:

Getting Ready for Christmas

Brad went to the Davis High School Christmas Dance

(It was Girl's choice)

We watched the Provo Tabernacle burn--so sad.

Sarah is glad to be home--she really misses her Pup

We celebrated Santa Lucia with our friends the Lucas Family. We recruited Tracy to be Santa Lucia.

New Books--irresistible

David and family made a nativity for a Christmas gift for Mom.

We dipped pretzels for neighborhood Christmas treats.

We made our Christmas Tree Bread for Christmas morning breakfast.

Christmas Light

Every December we light an advent candle for dinner each night to help us count down to the days to Christmas. We like to turn out all of the lights (except for the Christmas tree) and eat dinner by candlelight. We have found that we need to light a few extra candles to be able to see what we are eating.

College here I come

Brad has been working on college applications--what fun!

Here is his completed application for BYU.

Start the Season

This year David is in BYU men's chorus. He absolutely loves it. He says that it makes his day everyday.

Last weekend we went to their Christmas concert. It made my day. What a wonderful way to start the Christmas Season.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We were so excited to have a nice long weekend all together as a family--we had lots of fun. Here are some of the the things that we did: the kids all played "Axis and Allies" a risk-like World War 2 board game. They really got into with costumes and accents. I'm pretty sure that is the only reason the girls played--they thought it was just a big role play.

When Ned was growing up his mother made cookies each year to put on their Christmas tree. some years they had a tree completely decorated with cookies. We inherited a few of hew cookie molds and decided to give cookie making and painting a try this year. The kids were pretty creative in painting the cookies. You make the cookie cough leaving out the baking powder or soda so the cookies retain their shape after they are cooked. We made the paint with egg yolks with food coloring or icing coloring.

We continued our tradition of cutting down our Christmas tree. Even the pup got to go this year.

The kids were so sad that we wouldn't get the "crazy tree". It was as wide as it was tall and would take up half the house.

I knew that if we decoarated this weekend I would get lots of help and I did. My mother always used to say "Many hands make light work". It is so true and it seems like we have fun along the way.

The kids decided they wanted to have an "Iron Chef" cooking competition. Ned and I were recruited to choose the secret ingredient and be the judges. The secret ingredient was "citrus". Sharing the kitchen provided a few challenges but overall things sent very smoothly. We ended with great tasting, creative food. After the secret ingredient was revealed they had 20 minutes to plan and gather ingredients and then 60 minutes to cook and plate. They were judged on Taste, Presentation and Creativity.

Planning--

the cooking begins

Food ready to be judged

A few years we started celebrating Hanukkah--in our very unorthodox way. Anything to learn about other cultures and a great reason to have a party. (We know that we celebrated it a few days early but that is when everyone was home.)

Our makeshift Menorah

The Dreidel game and a great new game "Hit or Miss"

We invited our good friends the Osborns to celebrate with us.

That is our weekend in a nutshell--we did have a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with the Stephenson Family and did lots of other things but they didn't get photographed --maybe next year.